The disclosure relates generally to product manufacturing, and more particularly, to additive manufacturing processes.
Additive manufacturing includes building two-dimensional layers (or slices), on a layer by layer basis to manufacture three-dimensional components. For laser powder bed diffusion and laser directed energy deposition processes Each layer is generally very thin (for example between 20 to 100 microns) and many layers are formed in a sequence with the two-dimensional (2D) shape varying on each layer to provide the desired final three-dimensional (3D) profile. On the other hand wire based additive manufacturing processes can deposit layers with mm height. In contrast to traditional “subtractive” manufacturing processes where material is removed to form a desired component profile, additive manufacturing processes progressively add material to form a net shape or near net shape final component.
Depending on process parameters and additive manufacturing process types, additively manufactured components demonstrate significant amount of distortion and residual stress. To obtain shape accuracy, various techniques are employed to compensate for the dimensional change during the part design step. The current process of distortion compensation relies on an expensive iterative approach which subtracts the computed distortion in each step to reach a final shape that upon distortion yields accurate shape. Current methods obtain the compensated geometry only from the spatial layout gap between the nominal and distorted models.